With the emergence of transgenic technologies, new ways to improve the agronomic performance of plants for food, feed, and processing applications have been devised. In addition, the ability to express foreign genes using transgenic technologies has opened up options for producing large quantities of commercially important products in plants.
New target genes of both plant and microbial origin are rapidly becoming available for the purpose of improving agronomic characteristics of crop species as well as plant properties. These advancements have already resulted in the development of plants with desirable traits such as resistance to diseases, insects, and herbicides, tolerance to heat and drought, reduced time to crop maturity, improved industrial processing, such as for the conversion of starch or biomass to fermentable sugars, and improved agronomic quality, such as high oil content and high protein content.